As more and more businesses invest in online commerce infrastructure, purchasing products on the Internet continues to gain popularity among consumers. Shopping online has many advantages. For example, one advantage is that a consumer can browse, research and purchase products in an efficient manner without expending the time and effort of visiting physical stores. Another advantage is that online stores do not have the limitation of retail space and tend to have a better selection of products than physical stores.
One popular way for consumers to shop online is to visit an online equivalent of a department store. While an online department store may offer a variety of different products, the store often carries only products that are deemed to be profitable relative to business constraints, such as inventory, profit margins, etc. Consequently, the selection of products in any particular area may be limited. Also, an online department store may not be able to offer the best price for all of the products that it carries. Thus, if a consumer wants to purchase a particular product and at the best price, the consumer may have to visit multiple online department stores and specialty stores, which can be a time-consuming process.
To provide a better online shopping experience for consumers, many shopping services enable consumers to compare prices on products available on the Internet. These shopping services typically allow a consumer to search for a particular product that is offered by multiple stores and provide prices of the products at each store for comparison. In the comparison page, the price for each store is generally followed by a link to the store. A consumer may follow the link to visit the selected store and purchase the product. Although shopping services provide more selection and better prices for products, purchasing multiple products in this manner often involves substantial effort and is time-consuming. In particular, a consumer typically has to go through multiple purchasing processes.
An efficient way for consumers to purchase products from multiple merchants continues to elude those skilled in the art.